Crimson and Blonde
by tfbl
Summary: Sherlock is still Sherlock, even if Holmes is just made up. He's a 5,000 year old Vampire whom has just met his Mate. Of course, John Watson has no idea and never will if Sherlock has anything to say about it.
1. Chapter 1

**A character whom is genderfluid (transvestite), as well as another that is pansexual feature very heavily in this story (although not at all in an explicit NC 17 sense), so if the character or the concept bothers you maybe it is best if you don't read. Just a fair warning.**

Just to be clear, the bolded text that appear before and after each chapter are flashbacks and are not in correlation with the main body of the chapter.

_**Do not own Sherlock.**_

**Crimson and Blonde**

**Blood in crystal goblets, the liquid appearing black in the candlelight.**

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**CHAPTER ONE**

Sherlock could not tell you the exact date nor the location of his birth (and yes, _born_ he was, just as Mycroft and their parents before them). You might assume this would vex him, not being able to be accurate in everything that concerns his life. In truth it does not. No. He's narrowed it down to roughly 5,000 BC and (quite possible) somewhere in the forests of what would much, much latter become Russia.

Roughly and quite possible.

Vague to say the least, but he's alright with that. Just as he's alright with the fact that he can't remember his first taste of human blood, his last taste of chocolate liquor, nor when he first killed with regret.

If there's one thing he's learned it's that if one of his kind cannot recall something it is not worth doing so, for in the expanse of their life it was of no importance.

Something that Sherlock can say with absolute certainty that he remembers are his parents.

His father was a tall man with pale skin, black hair and deep gray eyes. Height that both his children inherited, to be sure. Mummy, unlike Father, possessed features quite like those of her younger son, with almost sable hair and bright blue eyes, and although not quite as tall as father, she often appeared to tower over him when she was angry with him for being particularly stubborn and arrogant – asshole would be the modern term.

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One might expect their parents to have been distant and cold, maybe even abusive, after a fashion.

This was not the case.

Their Father was stern, sarcastic, egotistical, and normally stubborn beyond belief, yet he was also a protective and gentle man, readily administering affection, praise, and advise on his children and wife. His temper did rival Mummy's at times, so yelling was far from unheard of, but never did he deal out the slightest hint of maltreatment. He was practical as well, cautioning his sons about the appropriate dangers of rouge werewolves, sunlight, the irreversible effects white oleander and other such things, but he was not one to embellish them. Not one to make up tales of children happening upon them because of their own mischief, of humans bottling the sun or of an ancient spirit that administered white oleander to misbehaving children as they slept.

Nor did he suffer fools, which was why he insisted that in addition to learning from the scroll collection, his sons must also have a full range of practical knowledge. He would often take his sons out and teach them about the animals in the area, the medicinal purposes and dangers of herbs, testing the accuracy of the claims that they read, and even educating them about the humans that lived nearby (that they were not simply food but were intelligent s beings with families and culture all their own and must be respected, which was why they only drained the ones that were close to death).

Mummy, like Father, was stubborn and possessed a temper, but for the most part that was where the similarities ended. She was more inclined to laughter and smiles than sarcasm and sternness (although she did that remarkably well when she wanted to). She was the one whom made their clothing, who taught he and Mycroft how to skin the animals and tan the hides, how to shape it to fit their bodies. She enjoyed learning and encouraged the same in her children and, while affectionate, was more reserved then Father_._ Particle she was, but she was also fond of stories. Marvelous tales of witches flying amongst the stars, talking animals and Gods toying with the lives of mortals and immortals alike, of demons and sentient water and fairies with brilliantly patterned wings.

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He was eight and there was a war on. There had been one on for years, although neither he nor Mycroft had been aware of it. Father and Mummy had grown up in the midst of wars – six, to be precise – and had not wanted their children to live in its shadow as they had done.

Throughout all the wars Vampires had been at the center of it regardless of their lack of numbers (astonishingly stupid of them, really). Before it had been between Witches. Now, for the past thirty years, in fact, Werewolves were considered the enemy.

Extremely large both in wolf and human form, very intelligent, terribly fast, as well as fierce fighters. It was a mistake to engage them, especially over something as abundant as land.

Engage his kind did, however.

If they had not then Sherlock and Mycroft would never have been awoken just before dawn, their parents eye's terrified as they yanked them from the bed and their grip tight around their arms. Father and Mummy had ran through the forest going faster then they'd ever gone before, their feet a blur as they pulled them along headless to Mycroft's worried queries and Sherlock's tear stained face.

There was loud noises behind them, crashing and thumping along with heavy breathing. Lots of noise. Like the wolf packs in the forest only bigger. Much bigger.

Something is wrong.

Something is very, very wrong.

They had reached a large waterfall, behind which was a long, narrow tunnel that lead deep into the rock face. Without pause Mummy flung Mycroft down it, Father shoving Sherlock down after him moments latter. The rock is wet as Sherlock slides down, crashing into Mycroft at bone breaking speed. Mycroft does not utter a sound. Instead he wraps an arm across his younger brother's chest and crushes him to his body, his other hand going up to cover his mouth least any sound escape. The tunnel is pitch black, completely devoid of light. They are safe down here from the sun, but what of whatever they are running from? What of Father and Mummy? Their footsteps have already faded away, their sharp order of "Stay!" ringing in Sherlock' s ears, that _law_ forcing him and Mycroft to obey. Why aren't they with them? They need a place to hide from the dawn sun too.

Those loud animal noises are getting louder and louder now. Within seconds Sherlock can tell they are right on top of them and Mycroft curls his larger body around his brother even tighter in an instinctive attempt to protect him, his lips brushing the back of his neck as he does so. Sherlock digs his nails into Mycroft's arm, headless of the blood he's drawing.

_Don't let go, Brother. Don't let go._

The sounds above them have become fainter, if only just. Neither Sherlock nor Mycroft's hold upon the other loosens.

It happens within seconds.

Snarls and hisses and tearing flesh.

Blood splattering the ground, teeth snapping and bones breaking and screams of pain coupled with howls of agony.

Skin burning.

Blood boiling.

Hair scorching.

Blisters oozing.

Fire catching.

Screaming.

Two long, drawn out screams.

The screams stop.

Sherlock and Mycroft lie within their tunnel, numb with shock.

They tremble, wishing they could get up and leave the tunnel but their elder's order preventing it.

The two brother's hold each other, and within their chests their hearts beat humanly, painfully fast, pounding out the throbbing beat of the war drums.

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**The first time he read the poem was two years after its original publication. At first, when Sherlock read the lines about pleasure domes and maids he had laughed before tossing the book aside, finding the lines themselves as well as the origin of their creation to be typical as well as amusing. In time, however, it had grown on him. Perhaps it was because, unlike most things in his life, the poem was consistent. A mountain standing firm in the middle of the sea. Maybe it was due to how, when one night out of sheer boredom, he had reread the poem, and as he studied the lines, as he turned them over and over in his mind in every language he knew, he began to find them beautiful. Perhaps it was because, as time passed and Sherlock was forced to alter himself, the lines provided a feeling of calm, a sense of safety and , oddly enough ownership, that Sherlock had not experienced for a great many decades. Whatever the reason the lines were repeated and copied down often enough to flow without conscious thought, weather it was his mind or pen forming the words. Within time they became as natural as breathing.**

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**There was not an exact moment when Sherlock realized that Mycroft was different. That he took both men and woman not because he was attracted to them both, but because he did not notice which gender they possessed. Because he cared about their personality and wit and the manner in which they held themselves, rather then what was between their legs or what they wore. When Sherlock did realize it, fully realize it, he'd mentally shrugged and directed his sibling's attention to a slight, dark skinned man laughing at the opposite table. What did it matter? Mycroft was still Mycroft.**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Strong reference to drug use and a minor reference to prostitution in this chapter.**

**Mycroft's hair has thinned as well as receded. Must be horrible for him, to have ceased to age with half a bald head, especially since here in this cold and green seaside landscape in which they find themselves, males with thick, full heads of hair are considered desirable. **

**Catching the sound of his brother's laughter Mycroft stiffens before whirling a sharp retreat to his side of the wooden structure, becoming determinedly interested in sharpening his knife as he stays despite his ire. **

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**They have been living together for some time, Mycroft and this female vampire. The one with the long brown hair that smells of snow, parchment, and poppies. Anthea, Sherlock thinks she is called. At first Sherlock assumes that, like many of Mycroft's relationships, it is simple companionship that holds them together, but when he visits them in the Northern Ireland and sees Mycroft laughing at something she has said – laughing as he had not done in decades and decades – Sherlock begins to rethink his earlier assumption, just ever so slightly.**

**CHAPTER TWO**

Drugs.

Cocaine, tobacco, opium, alcohol, and everything else under the moon and sun. Plant matter, chemical compounds, and oil extract that are meant to alter perception, to create visions and make a body dance and the mind to do a deadly rainbow twirl as muscles seize and breath stills, as deity's speak and the devils claws gouge and laughter echoes inside of helpless skulls.

They have been in existence since the beginning of time and even if their use is ceased entirely, they will remain, just in an undulated form.

When someone (he's deleted whom it was that did so) asked which species had created them, Sherlock had been unable to say. Human? Vampire? Perhaps both races began the experimentation at the same time, whenever that time may be.

What Sherlock does know is that pure mortal drugs do not have any effect whatsoever upon his kind. The drugs that are required to effect them are consisted of matter that, alone, is more than enough to kill a human outright, whereas with them it only achieves an altered state of conchies.

For centuries, Sherlock recalled, he'd viewed mind altering substances as vile. As a foolish indulgences and something that only the weak partook in.

Then.

Then in 1899 he took a case that resulted in a vampire child being slaughtered in front of him and arriving too late to prevent the parents from immersing themselves in liquid silver. Too late to prevent them from committing suicide. Then, afterwards when there was no more cases, when his mind had been nearly consuming itself with boredom and, no matter how hard he'd tried the image of bubbling hoary flesh and the echo of high pitched, terrified pleading would not be deleted…. Sherlock had decided to try some.

Just one shot was all. Just to experience something new. Something different and complex. Something that would make it – _them and it and __**oh please help me please please help**_ – would make everything stop.

So he'd injected it into his veins. A clear, liquid solution of Belladonna, Ash, Human bone, Hellebore, American Pokeweed, Purple Nightshade, and the slightest drop of silver.

He'd pushed the plunger down and…

Oh yes!

Yes!

Bliss. It was the sweetest blood and greatest fucking session and the sunlight sinking into your skin and music flowing from your fingers and so, so much more and…

Everything was quiet. Still. Silent. Nothing.

_This_ was why they took them, humans and vampires alike. _This_ was _why_.

Days latter the drug began to wear off and Sherlock had come to too his brother shouting his name, his siblings hands like iron brands upon his arms as Mycroft shook him like a rag doll and bruised his face with the force of his strike.

Sherlock had pushed away Mycroft's hands and sat upright, feeling nothing a flash of irritation that Mycroft was present and that his high had been so rudely brought to an end.

Sherlock stares up at Mycroft, watching as his brother takes in the syringe lying on the table and the scent lingering in the air. The navy blue fabric of his coat and scarf hanging haphazardly on the back of a chair, as well as Sherlock's exposed arm and _no _evidence of a struggle. Sherlock also sees the expression that flicks over Mycroft's face. One of disappointment and pain and fear and something that makes it clear that Mycroft would heave right there upon the floor if he were able and give Sherlock his own blood if it would purge the drug from his system.

Sherlock sees but, due perhaps do to the lingering effects of the drug, he fails to observe. He had not observed that Mycroft, whose voice was normally quiet, cool, and aloof… had been _screaming_, and that those screams that had consisted of one name and one name only, had been filled with pure and utter terror. Sherlock does not observe his brother's pupils; blown so wide that not a trace of blue could be found, nor does he observe Mycroft's arterial pulse; the vein pumping -throbbing and pounding a pulsating beat of the war drums - humanly fast, painfully fast - underneath the skin. Sherlock does not observe the fully dropped fangs nor Mycroft's bloodless face coupled with his shaking hands and not even the small hisses of distress that escape the vocal cords of the one before him. Nor does Sherlock observe that for the first time in his life, Mycroft had _struck_ him.

But even if Sherlock had observed he would not have cared. From that point forward he was an addict, and as his gaze landed on the empty vial upon the table, the only clear thought in his mind was getting his next fix.

That was the way it remained for just two years shy of a centaury. It did not matter what his brother and sister-in-law did. How much they pleaded and bribed, what they gave nor what they took away, nor how frequent their attempts to dispose of the toxin from Sherlock's home. It made no difference whom was killed for providing the drug, the number of interventions they staged and not even when, in what was perhaps a last ditch effort, they severed ties completely for six years.

Sherlock continued to obtain the drug, continued to inject and make his mind dance even while it was as silent as the grave. His tolerance built and so he began to require a higher dosage, and he'd responded as such, obtaining even more. He continued to wake up with seamen leaking from his ass and aching limbs and kept on selling himself as well as buying and stealing and almost loosing control and going on a feeding frenzy when he'd come to after weeks without a single drop of human blood sliding down his throat. Those words that he knew by heart, words of voices prophesying war ran uncontrobally through his mind, no longer a source of comfort. He failed to notice when human fashions changed around him, wearing clothing at least five years out of date and only altering his coat himself twice within all those years (Mycroft paid for the necessary alterations). He continued to waste away until he was skin stretched over bone and the bags under his eyes resembled bruises more then anything else and his eyes became as dull as a corpse. Until, unknown to him, Mycroft held his hand, broke down and sobbed after the twentieth near fatal overdose and Anthea put the couch through the wall and glass through her hand.

In true addict fashion Sherlock did not see anything wrong with his behavior. It was his choice and it wasn't like he was harming those two infuriating busybodies and any human or vampire that he chose to fuck was his business, not theirs.

Besides it was not like his mental functions and observational abilities were anyway impaired, and when his son, Michael, came along never once did Sherlock shoot up around the boy. He always made sure that the drugs were hidden and the child was away or in another's capable hands before injecting the liquid into his bloodstream.

That rock bottom everyone's got? Sherlock's came one day in 1998, when high out of his mind and convinced that Anthea had disposed of his drugs, had almost shoved her out into the last rays of the setting sun. The sun that would have killed her.

That had never happened before. Never had he been so high that he'd attempted to murder one of his… one of his family. It was there, as he laid upon on the dirty floor of his flat pinned under Mycroft's fangs, his blood coating Anthea's hands testament to the multiple wounds that covered his entire upper body, that Sherlock decided to give up the drugs. It was not just because his brother and sibling were… _necessary_… but because The Work was also becoming effected by his near constant altered state, and The Work was much more important then mere _sentiment_. Yes. That's why Sherlock went cold turkey. Why he dove into hell and endured seizures and sweats, fire ripping across his body and saw his parents and Mycroft and that that vampire child as well as a child with a torn throat, all drenched in blood and silver as they stood by his bedside. It was why Sherlock fought like a feral tiger, fangs ripping and nails tearing at anything within reach and muscles bulging underneath his wasted skin, why he was screaming even when he'd no voice left to scream and why he was glad for the restraints that held him.

Because of The Work.

Sure.

_That _was why.

It had nothing to do with the blisters on Anthea's arms nor Mycroft's hunched form as he supported himself against the wall of his little brother's detox room. It had nothing to do with the cocktail of fear-guilt-disgust that was eating away at his stomach lining.

Nope.

Nothing at all.

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Of course it was a struggle, staying clean. How could it not be, after 98 years of not being so?

Admittedly, however, it was a relief to let his deductions to soar, to fly across his brain and out of his mouth without any regard for restraint or utterly pointless social conventions. To leave mortals gapping in his wake and his brother stiff lipped and straight backed with disapproval.

When the deductions weren't enough? When he wanted another hit so badly he was shaking with it and that poem of a burning tree and his violin did nothing to calm him?

He took up smoking. Another drug, yes, but not one nearly as dangerous. It was the expensive kind to, and not just because of the 4,320 ingredients. No. It was fifteen pounds per pack because, unlike the low tar stuff, you could really taste the Purple Julie and Linden Bark, not to mention the Rose oil and essence of Datura as well as Brugmansia, the pure Perique and aconite. Then there was the scent of Mint that lingered in the air for an hour after one had ceased to smoke.

When that didn't quiet cut it?

Then he threw himself into The Work and bothered New Scotland Yard day in and day out until a younger, newly appointed head officer by the name of Lestrade gave him a case just to shut him up, only to be astonished when Sherlock solved it within twelve hours and told them exactly where to find the murderer. There were many more cases after that.

_Thank god_ Sherlock will never admit to.

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**Although Father towers over Mummy by a good foot he seems to shrink before her, having just made a comment that Mummy considers to be particularly distasteful, judging by the angry tone of her screams. As Sherlock watches his parents the moonlight breaks through the trees, causing Mummy's eyes to flash. Father still looks embarrassed for his earlier remark, but there is a strange light in his eyes as he looks at Mummy.**

**Mycroft, seeing the transition as well, tugs on Sherlock's hand to lead him away even though the wind isn't blowing in their direction and they are behind a really big tree. Mummy and Father can't see or smell them to why must they leave?**

"**Why does Father look at Mummy like that, Mycroft? It's a funny look." Sherlock asks as he runs along at his brothers side.**

"**It is nothing, Sherlock. Father is just – um – hungry, that's all."**

"**Still? We just drained three humans."**

"**Yes, well sometimes adults have to eat more then kids do."**

"**Why?"**

"**They just do." Mycroft points up ahead "Look, see that big tree? I'll race you."**

**The conversation forgotten Sherlock speeds ahead of Mycroft (whom is thirteen and knows almost everything, so he must be right), because that tree is the biggest one he's ever seen and he's going to win this time.**


End file.
